


Yellow Flicker Beat

by greygerbil



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: AU: Varric is the Inquisitor, Banter as flirtation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, M/M, Purple Hawke (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:47:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22437403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greygerbil/pseuds/greygerbil
Summary: Varric thinks that he's not the right hero for this tale, but Hawke disagrees.
Relationships: Male Hawke/Varric Tethras
Comments: 3
Kudos: 35
Collections: Writing Rainbow Yellow





	Yellow Flicker Beat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Asymptotical](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asymptotical/gifts).



> Title credit goes to Lorde.

Dwarves did not dream and Varric could not imagine how others went to bed knowing they might face a raging demon reaching for them with boulder-sized hands and blood-red lyrium threading through every wall they turned to. As consciousness returned in shattered pieces, he fought through his feverish delirium, closed his eyes and opened them in hopes of finding the real world, shook his head to empty it of wordless fear and anger.

Finally there was light, soft and dimmed, and he was looking out of bleary eyes at a wall of wooden boards and the blue woollen edge of a pillowcase. The air was warm, filled with the quiet crackle of fire, and smelled like resin and fresh hay.

Varric sat up and stared at his palm. It would have been too much to ask for the hole in it to also have been part of his delusions.

“Varric!”

A hand grabbed his shoulder. Varric whirled around so fast his head spun. He hadn’t heard that voice in months.

By the side of the bed stood Hawke, staring at him wide-eyed. Without hesitation, Varric reached up and slung his arms around his neck. After surviving an explosion that had levelled a whole village’s worth of people, stumbling out of the Fade assisted by a vision, having been jailed for murder of the Divine with an anchor to the Fade in his palm and finding out that red lyrium had made it to the surface once more, he was for once at a loss for words. Hawke closed him tightly in his embrace, sinking onto the edge of the bed.

“I can’t leave you alone for a second,” he said into Varric’s hair when they’d sat like that for a long moment. “You had me worried me there. Three days unconscious is usually the preface to death.”

“Well, apparently I’m one tough dwarf. Made it out of the Conclave – which I promise I didn’t blow up, by the way.”

Hawke pulled back. The look on his face was unusually stern. “I came as soon as I heard about the Temple. I told you it was a bad plan to let this Seeker do as she pleased with you. I should have come along.”

“And then what? You could have died at the Conclave, too?” Varric asked, placing his hand on Hawke’s thigh. The memory of the scorched corpses sitting in a field of rubble was still burned into his mind and probably forever would be. “The Temple of Sacred Ashes buried a lot of people. I’m happy you weren’t among them.”

Hawke looked unconvinced, but he only shook his head at him and wrapped his arm around Varric’s shoulders again.

“What _did_ happen there?”

“I don’t know,” Varric said, honestly. “I realise that’s not a good answer. I should probably start thinking of a story.” But Hawke would trust him regardless, Varric knew that. “I stumbled in on Divine Justinia being – shit, I couldn’t tell you. It looked like someone was using her for a ritual.” Varric rubbed his forehead. The memory had only come back when they had walked into the burned-out shell of the Temple. “Then everything went black and I woke up in the damned Fade with this thing on my hand. There was a woman guiding me out, but I can’t tell you who she was. My best guess is a spirit.”

He presented the Mark on his hand to Hawke, who studied it for a long moment. He was a mage, but Varric doubted that really helped him here.

“I talked to Solas, the apostate. He says this thing closes rifts in the Veil?”

“Yeah, pretty handy. No idea what it does on a dwarf, since we don’t exactly have much to do with the Fade.”

They sat in silence for another moment. Even by their standards, this was a lot of fucking weird. Hawke’s hand in the back of his neck made Varric feel just a little better, though. Hawke had that effect on people. You could always believe you’d pull through somehow with him at the helm.

“I’m surprised Cassandra didn’t strangle me when you showed up,” Varric said with a pale smile.

“She can’t now.” Hawke gave a wry grin. “After you closed that rift at the Temple, and with stories of the woman who helped you out of the Fade, they are now calling you the Herald of Andraste.”

Varric had often wondered if the tales the Chantry told were true, but the fact that Andraste should have returned after all these years to personally rescue a dwarven businessman, of all people, seemed relatively unlikely. Even the Chantry held to the position that the Maker hadn’t made his kind and they claimed ownership of damn near everything else.

“Well, that’s just about the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard – and I have heard a lot of bullshit in my day,” he said. “Did they miss that I’m a dwarf? And I’m not exactly a priest among my kind, either.”

“It’s kind of a good story, though. It’s not hard to see why it caught on.”

Varric sighed. Hawke was not wrong: everybody loved a good miracle rescue. It just seemed like a very bizarre tale when centred on him.

“I guess it beats being executed for murder,” he murmured. “But I have a feeling I won’t be able to count on Andraste from here on out. You wouldn’t happen to plan on staying around for a bit?”

“And miss you having to deal with being a Chantry saint? Not for the world.”

Varric kissed him, as he didn’t have a joke ready to respond and everything else that could have come out of his mouth would have been so romantic that Hawke would never have let him live it down.

“We should probably go tell the others you survived before we end up putting this bed to use,” Hawke said, grabbing Varric’s crossbow where it leaned against a table.

“I’m sure they’ll be thrilled with their new Herald.”

When Varric opened the door, the sunlight blinded him and a cold rush of mountain air was beaten into his face by a stiff wind. It took him a second to adjust and see the crowd of people that quickly closed in when they noticed him. In fact, it seemed like they might have been waiting for any sign of life. _Have they been here for three days?_

Varric tried for a reassuring smile and stepped out onto the unpaved road. He heard whispers around him. The word ‘herald’ fell too often. There was still a hole in the sky, but it didn’t seem to actively rain thunder and stone down on them anymore, so that was an improvement.

Did he hold the secret to closing it for good in his hand, after all? He followed Hawke, almost missing the Chantry building they were walking towards as he kept his eyes upwards.

“What do you think?” Hawke asked.

“I’m thinking this is something that seems like it would happen to you, not me.”

Hawke chuckled. “True. But I can’t be the hero of every story.”

“You did a good job last time.”

“Did I?” Hawke asked. “By the end of that book you wrote, a Chantry had just been blown to pieces.”

“And if this is my chapter, it started out with an even bigger explosion,” Varric pointed out. “You at least kept it at bay for nine years.”

“No one says it has to be downhill from here,” Hawke gave back. “It’s just incredibly likely from all our experiences so far, but it’s not _guaranteed_.”

Varric had to laugh. Hawke squeezed his shoulder.

“Come on, Herald. Let’s see where this is going. I think you can make a good story out of this one.”

Varric grabbed Hawke’s hand before he pushed the Chantry door open.


End file.
